The Joys of Turbo replacement....

Fun with turbos!!!
(sarcasm)

Well, around Dec 23rd 1998 or so I blew the turbo in the Daytona. It's too bad...but not unexpected figuring that the turbo had 97k miles on it. I knew I would be replacing it sooner or later. The car made a trip from Va to Nh with little problem, ate alittle oil in the trip but nothing major. Got home and met up with a friend who has a 94 Probe. We got out on the roads and were heading back to his house. We were side by side at a light and I figured I would get quick off the light but nothing major. Light changes and I rolled the car off the line and then got on the gas alittle because I knew it would take nothing to get ahead of a dressed up Escort. I got on the gas and got ahead of the probe and noticed smoke in my rearview mirror and the car was really lacking in proformance. When I got to the next light I could not get any boost out of the car....and had NO pick up. I could have been drag raced by a big wheel and lost. We limped the car to his house and found it was out of all oil, most likely as result of what happned because I had looked at it earlier in the day and it was fine. Figuring I could not drive it home I left it there and got a ride home. The lucky thing was that the friends brother was a Dodge mechanic at the dealer down the road. He got out the next morning and sure enough, the turbo was blown. Not the night it happned it was not really smoking. But that was not the case the next morning. HOLY COW!!!! We could blot out the sun with a few deft pumps of the gas. We threw a bunch of oil into it and ploted out a route that would keep the car off as many main roads as possible so we could possibly avoid getting arrested for creating a dangerous situation. Didn't mean we didn't scare a few people though. My friend had my truck and was driving ahead of me to start with. It was pretty funny, I'd be sitting at a light with smoke creeping up from all sides of the car. Nothing to major though...just alittle white smoke. Light would change and I would have to get on the gas and the show would begin. The car was ok as long as I kept the boost under -15psi. If it got close to that or above...ha ha ha....SMOKE!!!! It was funny watching the guy behind me just stop and let like a mile get between hin and I before he would start moving again. The smoke was enough to TOTALY block out 4 lanes of traffic....not a safe thing...but some what humorus. In time we put my friend in the truck behind me so he could set the distance between me and who ever was behind me. Brave kid.....said he lost sight of the road 4 times. Got it home with out killing anyone....or getting arrested....whew. I posted to the SDML and Matt Rowe offred his help to fix the car. All I need to do was get a new turbo and some other various parts. So the next day he came over with his Spirt R/T and we got started. We decided to go the route of pulling off the head because he had done that before and was comfortable with that. In the 1st night we got the engine apart. Everything looked pretty good, Lotsa carbon though from all the oil that was burned. One note was that we found like 3 quarts of oil in the intercooler and all other parts we removed.

WORKING ON THIS AS WE SPEAK..............